: What does the Petro government expect on Tuesday and what also thinks about this decision of some mayors not to follow the indications of the civic day?
Armando Benedetti (AB): This type of appreciations or opinions or guidelines that mayors are generating is quite sad. At no time are they thinking what it means to go and express the voice of what someone believes to be pronounced. There is nothing in democracy that is most valued than a peaceful march, than a march with joy, that a march that is carnival, that is an expression of the people that is above a congress, of a council, of a mayor. Citizen participation in the streets, citizen mobilization, is what democracy really loves the people and the love of their democracy.
And the emphatic to cut that of Tagus because they want to practically is something that shows rather a hatred towards Petro, which ends it reflecting in a blow of a hatred towards such manifestations of democracy.
: What survey has been able to do? People are going to go to the streets massively, it’s not easy … How do you see the thermometer in front of this demonstration?
AB: A mobilization will never be easy for absolutely any leader. I think the only leader, I have the assurance that the only leader who really can and is making marches and mobilizations is the President of the Republic.
I would retailer to any other candidate for the presidency, from which he has 0.2 % until he takes 13, 14 %, to convene a demonstration, to convene a march, and I swear that he would go quite badly. So, we hope you have a better result than the previous ones, which have always been good.
See the interview with Armando Benedetti, Interior Minister:
: Yes, Minister. Now, many people are questioning this march because what is required and what the country needs is that there is productivity, that there is employment, that there is work, that people come out to earn the day, work. Stop the country, decree a civic day on a Tuesday in the context of promoting a popular consultation, that is frowned upon by some public opinion sector.
AB: The country is at full steam producing and you find that the economy is going well, that unemployment has dropped, that foreign investment, that tourism has risen. Then the country goes to all steam. So, on the contrary, people go out to support a consultation and collective rights that Congress is denying them in the seventh commission of the Senate. And there what is sought then is that they support the consultation because it is being sought is to value and change the collective rights of a code that is since 1950. That code, to update it today, is enslaving people.
Business leaders are not paying their salary to pay employees with the pruritus that there will then be more employment and more jobs. And that is not happening and it is not so and that is the only thing that is being sought. Now, it is changed to other much more important values than bringing the country to steamed. The good thing in democracy is that people can leave. In the other dictatorial countries, the first premise, the first characteristic is that no one can protest or show their nonconformity or their support for certain policies of the State or the same government.
Here what is being proposed is citizen, indigenous, student mobilizations that go out to support a consultation of a change in the rights of a collective work regime. So, what we are looking for is that type of mobilizations. That is what democracy loves. That is what characterizes a democracy and if someone opposes because he has anger and hate and with the livers he points out that they do not march because he is attentive against the best and older and most beautiful postulates of a democracy.
AB: The one who says that it is being done or is looking to take some people forced to march does not know absolutely any manifestations, mobilizations, concentrations for democracy.
You can force a certain number of people, but when 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 are impossible for you to force. So the first answer is that it is impossible to force someone. The second: we are not in plan to force. All we are inviting to mobilize through social networks, guidelines in the media, through the leaders of the historical pact and the people who accompany the government.
: Yes, Minister, but anyway, what they say is that the Petro government has launched a plan to anticipate the 2026 campaign, which is call for popular consultation is the first phase and is a phase that will be maintained from here to the elections of next year and that the popular consultation what it seeks to shake the streets and look for the greatest number of political revenues for petrism. Are politics with this popular consultation?
AB: People when they say the word political confuses it with the word politiquería. Here, of course politics is being done. Politics covered in the Constitution are being made, in the law that protects citizen participation, in the consultations that must be made.
There is a sentence, which is the C-180 of 1994, which on the consultations says that it is when settling differences between the Legislative and the Executive. Here it is very clear that what we want to do is rescue collective rights that are inspired by international agreements, in the decisions of the Constitutional Court and at the same time in what was the DNA, the heart of President Petro’s campaign in the sense that social reforms are.
These social reforms have to do one of them with the labor issue. For example, that the nighttime begins at 6 in the afternoon, that 100 % of the holiday and Sunday is paid job stability, which the apprentices are paid 66 % of what is a minimum salary and the one that is already a practitioner to be paid 100 %, that the paternal license passes from two to four weeks.
That digital platforms such as Rappi, etc., have contracts, that community mothers have social services contracts and benefits, that women who have menstrual pathologies can go to the doctor, there are a number of series, things, that I am sure that the working class is interested and not the leader.
What happened was that there was an institutional blockade. Why is the queen test that there was an institutional blockade? Because they had to sign six speakers, they ended up signing eight, two more with whom they did a majority and were not interested or discussing, or discussing the project. They had already made a decision.
Suspiciously, and I say suspicious, because it is obvious that here was the ruling class, the Andi, the businessmen in which they saw and even governors, mayors and candidates for the presidency close to the regions of some of these people or these senators who voted no and denied voting.
I last 20 years of congressman and never, never, ever, I really saw what happened what happened, signed some speakers and members of the commission who were not speakers so that there were no discussion or vote at any time.
: Minister, since he is touching the bottom of this debate, there are reforms that are approved and not approved. President Gustavo Petro has been approved reforms; For example, the pension, a tax reform when Congress started, many others. So, for some, Congress is for and for others, Congress is not useful?
AB: You said it very well when I asked me the question. It is sometimes approved or not approved. It is that here before being discussed and approved, people who were not speakers signed a presentation. That had never happened, it was never happening.
It is as if there were 10 speakers from a Plenary of the Senate who are going to vote negative, that they will present the negative presentation and 55 signatures appear before the discussion and before the vote. That had never happened.
It means that there was a blood pact in favor of the leaders to say “this is a death” and try to hit the government. When we say that we are going to consult, you cannot say that it is bad. It is a mechanism of citizen participation. It already sank because there are 14 members and signed eight. That had never happened. But it was so dumb, so hurried and so rough that they signed the eight before for having an early victory and making the institutional blockade.
They already told us that there is no discussion. They already told us how they will vote before the discussion. It is that the other two who are placed did not care at any time what was going to happen in the discussion. They folded to those six.
: Minister, but to that same congress that you accuse of institutionally blocking President Petro will have to carry the proposal of the popular consultation, because the law says that he must have the approval in the Senate plenary. When will you take as head of the political portfolio the popular consultation to discussion of the Senate plenary and if you are confident that the Senate plenary will be approved so that that popular consultation is made?
AB: Let’s start at the beginning. The President of the Republic, with the supply signing has to sign the request of the consultation, takes the Senate of the Republic and the Senate processes it as if it were a proposition. Eye with what I am going to tell you that it is very important. If the Senate says yes, the president the next three months goes to a call. If there is no decision, the president can also call a consultation.
: Do you have the votes in the Senate plenary to decide in favor or do you think the Senate will not decide and with that argument the president calls it anyway?
AB: I am going to tell you that more than having the votes, I would believe why the votes can be given. It would cost me a lot of work to understand and see that some people who are chosen by the popular vote are not able at any time to accept that the people are pronounced. It would be very absurd that the Congress of the Republic, the Senate of the Republic, popularly chosen, denies the opportunity to the Colombian people to pronounce.
That it is pronounced not on any issue, not on a whim, but about collective labor rights that are not reinforced since 1950 and that are completely outdated. So why is a query be carried out? Because it is the essence of what was the presidential campaign, which today is being denied by eight people who did not want to discuss or vote and signed to say that they were against the reform without discussing.
: That is, Minister Benedetti, who with or without approval in the Plenary of the Senate, if in the Senate plenary he does not decide, because there will be popular consultation in Colombia …
AB: This week, at the latest the other, the questions must be ready. Then you could send to the Senate in the next 10, 15 days.
: I understand that you say if the Senate does not decide. And if the Senate says no, what happens there?
AB: I find it hard to believe that the Senate coming from popular vote origin tells the people that it cannot be pronounced. What is the fear of consultation? That is, if I were in the opposition, I would say “let’s go to the consultation”, any moderately known politician knows that getting 13 million votes is quite difficult. Any moderately diligent politician would know, as he knew at the time, we lived it with the plebiscite, the opposition at that time represented by President Álvaro Uribe against the plebiscite did not even be clear until the last second if he left by abstention or left no.
I do not understand why they are, why they look like the defensive, from here it seems that they were scared, as if they were worried, I do not know what the crying is.
: But if you get 5 million votes to the polls, because there Petrismo has a political capital for 2026 and that is what is criticized, minister, that with this popular consultation what you can be doing is political, but for the purposes of the elections of 2026, beyond the legitimate questions and the need to ask people if or do not agree in the background what is there is an electoral intention.
